Getting older

T brought to my attention yesterday the five remembrances – one of the Buddha’s many OCD-inspired lists of truths. Oddly, though the spirit of the remembrances is very familiar to me, its specifics – and its specificity – I didn’t remember. This in spite of a pretty deep dive I’ve done into certain corners of Buddhist thought over the last 15 or so years.

The gist?

We get sick.

We age.

We die.

We lose (become separate from) all that we love.

Our actions are all we have.

Fair enough.

This, on a day when I’m feeling those first two acutely.

Nine years ago, I had a pretty major back surgery. Recovery was long, slow, incomplete. Lately, I’ve struggled with problems at the opposite end of my spine. These are less life-threatening than those previous ones (I was lucky to avoid paralysis), they’ve been much more painful. Since the week before Thanksgiving, sitting has been a pretty excruciating experience for me. Add to that, my right knee – normally the stronger one – seems to have tired of being favored and now is protesting loudly.

As I limped out of the doctor’s office yesterday, I processed what I had been told: notwithstanding the last six weeks of pretty intensive physical therapy (more about which anon), another surgery likely looms.

I’m sad and scared.

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